The Time Machine

 

“He had blue eyes, you know,” Brian said, and looked at me to see my reaction.

“Who?” I asked.

“Him,” said Brian, pointing to the drawing of Mathew Brady on the wall in front of us.  We had come into the museum to avoid the rain and had found ourselves near the Bushranger exhibit.  The drawing was sepia in colour so you’d be hard-pressed to know if the eyes were blue or otherwise.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I know?” smirked Brian.

Playing the game, I answered, “How do you know?”

“Because I met him last night and they’re definitely blue.”

“It says here that he was hanged on May 4, 1826.  How on earth can you say that you met him?” I asked, wondering whether I was making a mistake in prolonging this conversation.”

Brian lowered his voice.  “Because my father has invented a time machine and, last night, we transported ourselves back 100 years and met Mathew Brady at the Rosevears Hotel.”

I think my mouth fell open. 

 

I knew that Brian’s father was, supposedly, an aerospsace engineer and inventor, though I had never known him to work at anything but delivering parcels for Amazon.  To my knowledge he was currently unemployed.

 

Later that day, we were in Brian’s garage where he was showing me the so-called Time Machine.  The main part seemed to be a large bundle of copper wire coiled on the ceiling of the garage.  The centre of the garage had been cleared and there was a chalk circle about 3m in diameter drawn around it.  In the circle were 2 purple scooters lying on their sides.

 

“Are these …?” I started to ask but Brian interrupted, “Yes, we found them on a street corner in Launceston and my dad said that if they weren’t in the custody of some person, we were within our rights to believe they had been abandoned and we could take possession of them legally.”

 

I began to see why Brian’s dad was often unemployed.

 

“Why do you need scooters?” I asked.

 

“It’s a bit complicated,” said Brian, “But, as Dad explained it, we’re fiddling with the space-time continuum.  The time part seems fairly reliable so we can always be sure we’ll end up in the time period we choose.  It’s the space part that’s a bit tricky.  Last night, we were aiming for The Gorge  but we ended up at Rosevears.  So we have to take some transport to make sure we can get home alright.  The scooters are not too big and not too heavy to carry.”

 

“Can we have a go?” I asked.  I had been a nut for time travel as long as I could remember.  I had read HG Wells and even, Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  I had seen every episode of Dr Who and still had a photograph of my favourite companion, Amelia Pond on my wall, the grown-up Amelia, of course, in her police uniform.

 

“I’m not sure,” said Brian. “I’ve never done it on my own.  Why don’t we wait until Dad gets home?”

 

He took some convincing but, eventually Brian sighed and agreed to give it a go.  We took our places in the centre of the chalk circle, each of us holding on to one of the scooters, and wearing the purple helmet just in case.  Brian had moved some dials on the wall which he told me would take us back to New Years Eve in 1989, when Launceston’s biggest-ever fireworks display had been held. It was a once in a lifetime event and, afterwards, thirty people had been taken to hospital and several dogs had run away from home, never to be seen again. Brian was holding a device which looked like the sort of thing you would use to open a garage door, and I think he was holding his breath as well.

 

The coil of copper wire on the roof of the garage began to glow red and there was a persistent humming coming from somewhere.  I clenched my fists.  Brian carefully pressed his button and, as we watched, the garage door rose noisily up to the ceiling.